Voicing Demands

Sohela Nazneen is a professor of international relations at University of Dhaka and a lead researcher at the BRAC Development Institute, BRAC University, Bangladesh.Maheen Sultan is one of the founders of the Centre for Gender and Social Transformation at the BRAC Development Institute, BRAC University, a regional centre on research, teaching and policy related to gender and social transformation. She is a development practitioner with over 25 years’ experience working for NGOs, donors, the UN, Grameen Bank and the Bangladeshi government in a range of capacities, from direct programme management to policy formulation. She co-edited Mapping Women’s Empowerment: Experiences from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan (2009).

Political transitions are opportunities for feminists to renegotiate the terms of citizenship. But they have also seen the appearance of newly assertive, even militant patriarchies. This very timely volume of essays by experienced feminist scholar-activists brings authoritative and sobering reflections on the complexities of building authentic feminist constituencies in developing country contexts in which the imperatives of equal rights for previously excluded groups of women can be distorted by a range of transnational forces, whose legal frameworks, financial resources and networks can both legitimate and undermine domestic feminist projects. The impressive achievements and the serious new obstacles faced by women's rights advocates in transitional contexts, and the feminist movement strategies in response, show the fundamentals of an inclusive politics of self-determination in the context of globalization.

• Introduction: Voicing Demands: Feminist Activism in Transitional Contexts - Sohela Nazneen and Maheen Sultan1. Well-Chosen Compromises? Feminists Legitimizing Voice in Bangladesh - Sohela Nazneen and Maheen Sultan2. Feminisms in Brazil: Voicing and Channelling Women's Diverse Demands - Cecilia M. B. Sardenberg and Ana Alice Alcantara Costa3. The South African Revolution: Protracted or Postponed? - Gertrude Fester4. Voicing Autonomy through Citizenship: The Regional Nationality Campaign and Morocco - Alexandra Pittman and Rabéa Naciri5. Motivated by Dictatorship, Muted by Democracy: Articulating Women's Rights in Pakistan - Afiya Shehrbano Zia6. Feminist Voices and the Regulation, Islamization and Quango-ization of Women's Activism in Mubarak's Egypt - Mariz Tadros7. The Many Faces of Feminism: Palestinian Women's Movements Finding a Voice - Elieen Kuttab